[p. 40r]
[0732] with a malacca. [0733] The dog was uniformly yellow, a mongrel I suppose, or a pedigree, I can never tell the difference. [0734] His death must have hurt him less than my fall me. [0735] And he at least was dead. [0736] We slung him across the saddle and set off like an army in retreat, helping each other I suppose, to keep the corpse from falling, to keep the bicycle moving, to keep ourselves moving, through the jeering crowd. [0737] The house where Sophie- — no, I can't call her that any more, I'll try calling her Lousse, without the Mrs — the house where Lousse lived was not far away. [0738] Oh it was not nearby either, I had my bellyful by the time I got there. [0739] That is to say I didn't have it really. [0740] You think you have your bellyful but you seldom have it really. [0741] It was because I knew I was there that I had my bellyful, a mile more to go and I would only have had my bellyful an hour later. [0742] [⁁]Human nature. [0742|001] Marvellous thing. [0742|002] The house where Lousse lived. [0743] Must I describe it? [0744] I don't think so. [0745] I won't, that's all I know, for the moment. [0746] Perhaps later on, if I get to know it. [0747] And Lousse? [0748] Must I describe her? I suppose [⁁]so. [0749] Let's first bury the dog. [0750] It was she dug the hole, under a tree. [0751] You always bury your dog under a tree, I don't know why. [0752] But I have my suspicions. [0753] It was she dug the hole because I couldn't , though I was the gentleman, because of my leg. [0754] That is to say I could have dug with a trowel, but not with a spade. [0755] For when you dig a grave[₰] one leg supports the weight of the body while the other, flexing and unflexing, drives the spade into the earth. [0756] Now my sick leg, I forget which, it's immaterial here, was in a condition neither to dig, because it was rigid, nor alone to support me, because it would have collapsed. [0757] I had so to speak only one leg at my disposal, I was virtually onelegged, and I would have been happier, [⁁]livelier, amputated at the groin. [0758] And if they had removed a few testicles into the bargain I wouldn't have objected. [0759] For from [⁁]such testicles [⁁]as mine,
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[0759] dangling at mid-thigh at the end of a meagre cord, there was nothing more to be squeezed, not a drop. So that non che la speme il desiderio, and I longed to see them gone, from the old stand where they bore false witness, for and against, in the lifelong case against me. [0760] For if they accused me of having made a balls of it, of me, of them, they thanked me for it too, from [⁁]depths of their rotten bag, the right lower than the left, or inversely, I forget, decaying circus clowns. [0761] And, worse still, they got in my way when I tried to walk, when I tried to sit down, as if my sick leg was not enough, and when I rode my bicycle they bounced up and down. [0762] So the best thing for me would have been for them to go, and I would have seen to it myself, with a knife or secateurs, but for my terror of physical pain and festered wounds, so that I shook. [0763] Yes, all my life I have gone in terror of festered wounds, I who never festered, I was so acid. [0764] My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over, now as of a joke which still goes on, and [⁁]it is neither for at the same time it is over and it goes on, and is there any tense for that? [0765] Watch wound and buried by the watchmaker, before he died, whose ruined works will one day speak of God, to the worms. [0766] But those cullions, I must be attached to them after all, cherish them as others do their scars, or the family album. [0767] In any case it wasn't their fault I couldn't dig, but my leg's. [0768] It was Lousse dug the hole while I held the dog in my arms. [0769] He was heavy already and cold, but he had not yet begun to stink. [0770] He smelt bad, if you like, but bad like an old dog, not like a dead dog. [0771] He too had dug holes, perhaps at this very spot. [0772] We buried him as he was, no box or wrapping of any kind, like a Carthusian monk, but with his collar and lead. [0773] It was she put him in the hole, though I was the gentleman. [⁁]For I cannot stoop, neither can I kneel, because of my infirmity, and if ever I stoop, forgetting who I am, or kneel, [⁁]make no mistake, it will not be me, but another. [0774] To throw him in the hole was all I could
[p. 42r]
[0774] have done, and I would have done it gladly. [0775] And yet I did not do it. [0776] All the things you would do gladly, oh without enthusiasm, but gladly, all the things there seems no reason for your not doing, and that you do not do! [0777] Can it be we are not free? [0778] It might be worth looking into. [0779] But what was my contribution to this burial. [0780] It was she dug the hole, put in the dog, filled up the hole. [0781] On the whole I was a mere spectator, [0782] I contributed my presence. [0783] As if it had been my own burial. [0784] And it was. [0785] It was a larch. [0786] It is the only tree I can identify, with certainty. [0787] Funny she should have chosen, to bury her dog beneath, the only tree I can identify, with certainty. [0788] The sea-green needles are like silk and speckled, it always seem[⁁]ed to me, with little red, how shall I say, with little red specks. [0789] The dog had ticks in his ears, I have an eye for such things, they were buried with him. [0790] When she had finished her grave she handed me the spade and began to muse, or brood. [0791] I thought she was [⁁]going to cry, it was the thing to do, but on the contrary she laughed. [0792] It was perhaps her way of crying. [0793] Or perhaps I was mistaken and she was really crying, with the noise of laughter. [0794] Tears and laughter, they are so much Hebrew to me. [0795] She would see him no more, her Teddy she had loved like [⁁]an only child. [0796] I wonder why, since she had obviously made up her mind to bury the dog at home, she had not asked the vet to call, and destroy the [⁁]brute on the premises. [0797] Was she really on her way to the vet at the moment her path crossed mine? [0798] Or had she said so solely in order to attenuate my guilt? [0799] Private calls are naturally more expensive. [0800] She ushered me into the drawing-room and gave me food and drink, good things without a doubt. [0801] Unfortunately I didn't much care for good things to eat. [0802] But I quite liked getting drunk. [0803] If she lived in embarrassed circumstances there was no sign of it. [0804] That kind of embarrassment I feel at once. [0805] Seeing how painful the sitting posture was for me she fetched a chair
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[0805] for my stiff leg. [0806] Without ceasing to ply me with delicacies she kept up a chatter of which I did not understand the hundredth part. [0807] With her own hand she took off my hat, and [⁁]carried it away, to hang it up somewhere, on a [⁁]hat-rack I suppose, and seemed surprised when the lace pulled her up in her stride. [0808] She had a parrot, very pretty, all the most approved colours. [0809] I understood him better than his mistress. [0810] I don't mean I understood him better than she understood him, I mean I understood him better than I understood her. [0811] He exclaimed from time to time, Fuck the son of a bitch, fuck the son of a bitch. [0812] He must have belonged to an American sailor, before he belonged to Lousse. [0813] Pets often change masters. [0814] He didn't say much else. [0815] No, I'm wrong, he also said, Putain de merde! [0816] He must have belonged to a French sailor before he belonged to the American sailor. Putain de merde! [0817] Unless he had hit on it alone, it wouldn't surprise me. [0818] Lousse tried to make him say, Pretty Polly! [0819] I think it was too late. [0820] He listened, his head on one side, pondered, then said, Fuck the son of a bitch. [0821] It was clear he was doing his best. [0822] Him too one day she would bury. [0823] In his cage probably. [0824] Me too, if I had stayed, she would have buried. [0825] If I had her address I'd write to her, to come and bury me. [0826] I fell asleep. [0827] I woke up in a bed, in my skin. [0828] They had carried their impertin[⁁]ence to the point of washing me, to judge by the smell I gave off, no longer gave off. [0829] I went to the door. [0830] Locked. [0831] To the window. [0832] Barred. [0833] It was not yet quite dark. [0834] What is there left to try when you have tried the door and the window? [0835] The chimney perhaps. [0836] I looked for my clothes. [0837] I found a light switch and switched it on. [0838] No result. [0839] What a story! [0840] All that left me cold, or nearly. [0841] I found my crutches, against an easy chair. [0842] It may seem strange that I was able to go through the motions I have described without their help. [0843] I find it strange. [0844] You don't remember immediately who you are, when you wake. [0845] On a chair I found
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[0845] a white chamber-pot with a roll of toilet-paper in it.
[0846] Nothing was being left to chance.
[0847] I recount these moments with a certain minuteness, it is a relief from what I feel coming.
[0848] I set a pouffe against the easy chair, sat down in the latter and on the former laid my stiff leg.
[0849] The room was chock-full of pouffes and easy chairs, they [⁁]thronged all about me, in the gloom.
[0850] There were also occasional tables, footstools, tallboys, etc., in abundance.
[0851] Strange feeling of congestion that the night dispersed, though it lit the chandelier, which I had left turned on.
[0852] My beard was missing, when I felt for it with anguished hand.
[0853] They had shaved me, they had shorn me of my scant beard. [0854] How had my sleep withstood such liberties?
[0855] My sleep as a rule so uneasy.
[0856] To this question I found a number of replies.
[0857] But I did not know which of them was right.
[0858] Perhaps they were all wrong.
[0859] My beard grows properly only on my chin and dewlap.
[0860] Where the pretty bristles grow on other faces, on mine there are none.
[0861] But such as it was they had docked my beard.
[0862] Perhaps they had dyed it too, I had no proof they had not.
[0863] I thought I was naked, in the easy chair, but I finally realized I was wearing a nightdress, very flimsy.
[0864] If they had come and told me I was to be sacrificed at sunrise[₰] I would not have been taken aback.
[0865] How foolish one can be.
[0866] It seemed to me too that I had been perfumed, lavender perhaps.
[0868] I said, If only your poor mother could see you now.
[0869] I am no enemy of the commonplace.
[0870] She seemed far away, my mother, far away from me, and yet I was a little closer to her than the night before, if my reckoning was accurate.
[0871] But was it?
[0872] If I was in the right town, I had made progress.
[0873] But was I?
[0874] If on the other hand I was in the wrong town, from which my mother would neccessarily 
be absent, then I had lost ground.
[0875] I must have fallen asleep, for all of a sudden there was the moon, a huge moon framed in the window.
[0876] Two bars divided it in three [⁁]segments, of which the middle remained constant, while little by